A YORKSHIRE terrier was mauled to death by a mastiff-type dog on a crowded section of Southbourne beach on Saturday night.

Shocked onlookers on a section of the beach near Warren Edge Steps intervened to try to stop the killing, said witnesses, leaving a young woman who tried to prise apart the mastiff’s jaws covered in the terrier’s blood.

Eyewitnesses told the Daily Echo police handed the terrier’s body to its owners – a young Hungarian family – in a paper bag.

A personal assistant from Bournemouth said she had comforted the mother of the dog’s eight-year-old owner in the moments after the attack, and had spoken out after reading of a separate attack in yesterday’s Daily Echo.

“The little boy’s mother was hysterical. The pavement was soaked in blood. It was the most horrendous thing I have ever seen. It made me sick to my stomach.

“I wasn’t going to say anything until I read about the dog attack in Kings Park in Monday’s Echo, and just thought, ‘Something has to be done’,” she said.

She added that the terrier had been running along the promenade near the Bistro on the Beach restaurant at about 8.30pm when the mastiff attacked it.

The terrier’s owner, a woman from Bournemouth, thought to be aged in her late twenties, had been jogging, while her son roller-skated alongside her, said witnesses.

But when the attack began, she and her son were joined by up to 15 bystanders in trying to save the tiny dog from the mastiff, which witnesses said was held on a lead throughout the attack.

Witnesses said the couple with the mastiff – described as a man in his forties and a woman in her twenties – had tried to leave the beach before members of the public stopped them after dialling 999.

A training manager from Bournemouth told the Echo she had helped the shocked child try to find his father after the attack.

“He tried to roller skate, but he was hyperventilating and in no fit state. My mother’s instincts kicked in. I helped him off with his skates, stroked his hair, and tried to calm him down.”

A Dorset Police spokesman said a 39-year-old man and a 19-year-old woman were arrested at the scene under the Dangerous Dogs Act, and later released on police bail while enquiries continue.

The mastiff is being held in non-police kennels while officers were studying CCTV footage of the attack as part of their investigation, he added.

• Witnesses to the attack – or to events leading to it – can contact Dorset Police on 01202 222222, or the free and anonymous Crimestoppers line on 0800 555 111, where mobile phone tariffs may apply.